Does anyone have much experience with IB's industry classifications? Per IB help desk, their classification is based on GICS. https://www.msci.com/gics But IB seems to have mapped GICS names to their own. Example (for JCI, Johnson Control). GICS sector = Industrials, IB's name = Industrial GICS industry group = Capital Goods, IB's name = (IB does not seem to provide industry group info) GICS industry = Building Products, IB's name = Building Materials GICS sub-industry = Building Products, IB's name = Bldg Prod-Air&Heating In addition, IB's industry classification data quality seems pretty low. AMZN is really under "Consumer Discretionary" GICS sector, but IB shows "Communications". Would love to hear other people's experience working with IB's industry classification data. Thanks. B.B.
It's doesn't matter. If IB terms it "Bob" and "Nancy" and "Susan" and "Jamil," you're going to have to stay on top of things, and call 'em Bob and Nancy and Susan and Jamil, too. A good habit, maybe every time you change TWS versions, is to run through your primary info-contracts, news sources, and industry groupings, and make sure that everything is up-to-snuff. To try and attach logic or reason or propriety on this? You have better things to do with your time.
If you fully commit to IB data forever, then maybe you can indeed think of all the names as random strings. But I am not convinced that IB's classification data is truly equivalent to GICS.
It doesn’t matter because every provider has problems with stock classification, every one does it differently, every one has bugs and discrepancies between each other. I use classifications from IB, Zacks and couple other providers, and none of them match too much between each other in any types of classifications. I use some of that data but still have to classify them on my own.